Using RAW format.

[Tony]

Could someone explain, in laymans (thick cunt) terms, what shooting in RAW is? Pros? Cons?

[Vidal]

Simply put it's exactly as the sensor sees the scene - with no processing or degradation by the camera's software. The downside is that the file size is usually much larger.

V.

[Gaz]

yeah it's pretty much the highest quality the camera can save, as Vidal says it's exactly what the sensor sees

[andy_mk3]

It's pretty much just a completely uncompressed and untouched picture. They can take up to and over 15mb a shot though, depending on the camera.

[Tweedie]

As people seem to be focusing on the size of the file i will explain a little more for you....

RAW file format is a naked image with no processing and no compressing, so what you see though the viewfinder/screen is the image you will get on the RAW file. RAW files are MUCH easier to edit and touch up too, as they haven't been compressed or processed the image can still be manipulated very easily and you WILL get better results from editing a RAW file than a Standard .jpg

If you are taking pictures of cars etc etc i would take them in raw, this will make it easier for you to get the range and depth of the image and colours..

[Jaffa]

Right, well I'll tell you what a RAW file ACTUALLY is then shall I? :pmsl:

This was covered over around 20 minutes on a seminar I went to so this is in brief.... when a RAW image is taken it is actually a Greyscale image. What you see on the back of your camera is actually a JPEG interpritation of what that RAW file would look like with an assigned colour space.

It is only when you actually open the file in a RAW editor that a colour space is assigned to the image and thus, you can generally choose what colour space to use without losing any of the data in the process. If you used a JPEG, you're stuck with the original colour profile, AdobeRGB for example. You CAN change it, but you're still changing an AdobeRGB file to some other format. Kinda like sticking Ferrari badges on your Vauxhall. It's still a vauxhall.

The same applies to White Balance which I completely ignore these days, all my white balance is done during post processing.

I have a PDF somewhere that I took from the seminar, PM me your e-mail address and I'll fire it accross when I'm at home.

[Tony]

Cheers Jaffa, PM coming your way.

[LM]

Right, well I'll tell you what a RAW file ACTUALLY is then shall I? :pmsl:


FPMSL. I <3 j00